“Then he may be dead.”

“By Jove!  I think he has quite as good a chance of surviving me—­not a shade of odds either way.  Look here, Bluebell, I will write a letter containing a full confession, enclose our marriage certificate, and seal it with this ring he gave me.  If anything happens, send it to him, and I believe he will take care of you, but not while I am alive.”

“Send it to him at once, Harry.”

“You used not to be so indifferent to poverty, Bluebell.  You told me, in the steamer, that you had a longing for luxury and riches.”

“Luxury and riches,” echoed Bluebell, “seem as improbable as ever.  I should like to be able to look my friends in the face.”

But it was all in vain.  Dutton, though remorseful, was obdurate; there was much to arrange, and he had only twenty-four hours to remain.  Lord Bromley had omitted the accustomed parting cheque, which Harry had reckoned on, and money was scarce with the two young people.

“Will you go back to Canada, Bluebell, till the war is over, and I will send you all the money I can?”

“What, as Miss Leigh?”

And he could say no more.  The same difficulty prevented her writing to the Rollestons, or any one else.  Long and anxiously they talked over their dilemma; Dutton had only money enough to pay his bill at the cottage, and Bluebell was resolute to earn something for herself.

She answered an advertisement in the Times he had brought with him, naming, as reference, the mother of Evelyn Leighton.  To her she also wrote, begging that any applicant might have the recommendation she had received of her from Mrs. Rolleston.

Dutton had gone, but expected to be able to return for a day or two before the fleet sailed, and Bluebell was left alone with her thoughts—­too full of horrors for solitude to be endurable.  Each night she dreamed of Harry, dying, and mangled by shot or shell, only to renew the vision in her waking hours; and, as she pictured such a termination to their brief married life, a vague tenderness took the place of her former apathy.  The very weakness he had shown in concealing their marriage made him more a reality to her by giving her an insight into his nature—­not an endearing trait, perhaps; yet sometimes the failing that one tries to counteract in the very effort it arouses awakens an interest.

Bluebell felt thankful that her hours at the cottage were numbered, for lately she had begun to fancy people looked askance at her, and the carpenter’s wife had developed an inquisitiveness akin to impertinence.

Mrs. Leighton sent a very kind answer, assuring her of the recommendation as she had received it from Mrs. Rolleston.  It was addressed to “Miss Leigh,” and a crimson flush rose to her temples at the unpleasant smile with which the postmistress handed it across the counter.  Harry, when he wrote, having posted it himself, ventured to address his letter to “Mrs. Dutton”; the only other she had received was from her mother, directed, as requested, to B. D. This letter had been rather distressing—­filled with vague fears, inspired, she was sure, by Miss Opie, and conjuring her, with promises of inviolable secrecy, to reveal her name.